1. Alex Beer complained to the Independent Press
Standards Organisation that the Mirror.co.uk breached Clause 3 (Privacy) of the
Editors' Code of Practice in an article headlined “False widow spider bite
leaves man with horrifying blisters and organ failure”, published on 11 August
2015.

2. The article reported that the complainant had
been bitten by what was thought to be a false widow spider, and that as a
consequence, he had been hospitalised, and blisters had appeared on his arm. It
was accompanied by two photographs: one photograph showed one of the blisters
on the complainant’s arm before it had been burst, and the other showed the
complainant’s arms after the blister had burst. The article did not appear in
the print edition of the newspaper.

3. The complainant said that he had written a
Facebook post about the spider bite for local friends and family. He said that
this was only visible to his 30 friends, but that his friends could then share
the post more widely. He said that he had been told by several newspapers that
the post had received more than 5000 shares, but he was not aware of the actual
figure as the post had been deleted. The post included the photograph of his
arm after the blister had burst, which he said was the only photograph he
uploaded onto his Facebook page. He said that the photograph of the unburst
blister was uploaded onto his wife’s Facebook page, and that this photograph
did not tag or reference him in any way. He said that the two Facebook pages
were not linked, that his wife’s privacy settings were “quite high”, and that
the photograph was not visible to his Facebook friends.

4. The newspaper said that the complainant’s
Facebook post had been openly available to the public. It noted that the
opening sentence to the post was “I don’t ask much from people but I ask you to
please read this. I am not posting this to scare people simply to bring
awareness”. It said that the information contained in the article had been put
into the public domain by the complainant, and that it was therefore not
private. The newspaper said that the image of the unburst blister was taken
from the complainant’s Facebook page, which was open for anyone to view at the
time.

5. The Facebook post described the medical treatment
the complainant received for the spider bite in some detail, including the
growth of blisters. It stated that “I am 32 years old” and gave the name of the
village in which he lived. It went on to state that “I know there has been a
lot of things in the media about the venomous spiders and in a way you shrug it
off because you think it would or could never happen to you. I am not a
gardener. I do not work outside and I have not been abroad”. The post also
stated that “you will see from the photos how my arms has been left after the
blisters”.

Relevant Code Provisions

6. Clause 3 (Privacy)

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her
private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital
communications.

ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions
into any individual's private life without consent. Account will be taken of
the complainant's own public disclosures of information.

iii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in
private places without their consent. Note - Private places are public or
private property where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Findings of the Committee

7. The images of the complainant’s arm were graphic
photographs of a medical condition that he was entitled to consider private.
However, the complainant had disclosed a number of details about the spider
bite and the subsequent medical treatment on Facebook in a manner which resulted
in the post being widely shared. Furthermore, the words accompanying the
picture did not suggest that the complainant considered this information to be
private, or that he was only sharing the information amongst friends and
family. On the contrary, the Facebook post gave the clear impression that it
was intended for a broader audience than his Facebook friends. The complainant
began his post by saying “I don’t ask much from people but ask you to please
read this”. He went on to explain that he was making the post to “bring
awareness” about spider bites, and introduced himself, giving his age, and
where he lived. Given the manner of the complainant’s public disclosure of the
image of the burst blister, the publication of this photograph did not
constitute a breach of Clause 3.

8. The Committee was unable to resolve the
complainant’s and the newspaper’s account of where on Facebook the image of the
unburst blister had been uploaded. Nevertheless, the content of this photograph
did not differ significantly from the photograph of the burst blister; it
depicted one of the large blisters which the complainant had described forming
on his arm in his Facebook post. For this reason, the publication of this image
did not disclose any further private information, beyond that which he had
included in his Facebook post, and there was no breach of Clause 3 on this
point.

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